This case is the first online “crawler” case in the field of short video platforms in China.
In September 2021, during an online inspection, Mr. Wu, an employee of an information company, found that someone was selling a software called “Huiyi Huike”, and purchased the software through the other party’s official website and phone. After using it, Mr. Wu was surprised to find that the software could actually “crawl” his company’s background data and relevant information about users in the live broadcast room, and immediately called the police. After investigation, the public security organs found that Ding, the owner of an information consulting company that sold the software, and the sales staff were suspected of committing a major crime.
After investigation, in 2019, Ding established his own information consulting company, but the company went out of business due to poor management. In mid-2021, Ding purchased Huiyi customer acquisition software at a price of 9,800 yuan from Ding (which was dealt with separately) to become an agent. Using this software, he could invade the servers of some short video platforms, and he could quickly catch them by searching keywords. Get platform information, mainly including user name, UID, signature and comments, etc., and then convert the UID into a QR code through software to accurately locate customers. Ding repackaged the software and sold it after “rebranding”, with an illegal income of more than 24,000 yuan.
According to reports, a “crawler” is a program used to crawl network resources, which can “bring” various links, information, etc. it has searched for, and give it to the person who cast the “crawler”. The users are mainly e-commerce companies, training institutions and media companies. After illegally obtaining user data, they promote and drain traffic for their own products and services. Among them, there are many unscrupulous businesses that produce and sell fake and shoddy goods, which poses great risks.
“‘Web crawler’ as a technical means is not illegal in itself, but because the software in this case has adopted security protection measures to avoid or break through the computer information system, it is illegal to obtain computer information by entering the computer system of the victim unit without permission. “Intrusion” in the crime of system data,” said Lin Hong, prosecutor of the People’s Procuratorate of Liangxi District, Wuxi City.
The judge in this case stated that the crime of invading computer information system programs is a new crime in Amendment (VII) of the Criminal Law, which is mainly aimed at providing others with tools or programs specially used to intrude or illegally control computer information systems, or knowing that others have intruded, Illegal control of computer information systems for illegal and criminal acts to provide programs and tools for them, and criminal acts in serious circumstances shall be punished. The “crawler” software involved in this case uses technical means to break through the anti-crawling measures of the short video platform and illegally obtain the specified data files in the backend server. Practitioners in the Internet industry should attach great importance to information system security and strictly implement relevant laws and regulations. , and conduct its own business legally and compliantly. (Rosasha Fan Zeng Xia Qian)